Credit:UN Photo / Paulo Filgueiras

A capable leader is under attack by a rare form of secular extremism

Gabriela Perdomo - Turkey’s promising democracy is facing a major challenge as a battle to defend the country’s secular mandate is turning into an almost-religious crusade. The Asian country standing at the door of the European Union (EU) faces a tough question: is radical secularism the only way to prevent Turkey from becoming an Islamist state?

For Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the answer is no. Since taking office in March 2003, Erdogan has tried to reconcile the secularist principles of the Turkish Republic with the democratic code that demands that the State respect individual freedoms—including religious expression. In a country where millions practice the Muslim faith, the prime minister’s initiative can only sound sensible.

But the AKP has Islamist roots. Even though it acts now as a progressive and pro-business organization, the party and Erdogan are seen with suspicion by the secularist establishment—which includes part of the Turkish elite, the judicial system and the powerful military. The secularist crusaders have accused the prime minister of wanting to instate sharia law, the kind seen in officially Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran.

In February, the AKP-controlled legislature voted in favour of lifting the current ban on Muslim headscarves in universities and colleges. Earlier this month, judges at the Constitutional Court voted 9-2 against the bill, arguing that it threatens the secular mandate enshrined in the Turkish constitution. In the following months, the same court will decide on a case tabled by Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, Turkey’s chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, who wants to dismantle the AKP and ban 71 of its members from political life —including Erdogan—for five years for attacking secularism. The headscarf ruling is seen as an indication that the Constitutional Court might vote in favour of Yalcinkaya and against the AKP.

The court’s ruling on the use of headscarves and its likely ban on the AKP are scandalous, to say the least. They show that Turkish judges remain heavily politicized and that they have their priorities all wrong. Their understanding of secularism has become radical and stubborn, which can endanger the fragile yet significant democratic gains made by Turkey in recent years. By defending secularism as the ultimate principle of the Turkish Republic, the judges and the hard-core followers of Ataturk are blindly walking into the abyss of radicalism—which in practical terms, given Turkey’s history, could even translate into a military coup.

Turkey’s passionate secularists are playing a dangerous game. The AKP won the majority of the popular vote in the 2007 legislative election and remains a well-liked organization today. Claims that Erdogan is trying to impose sharia are unsubstantiated and paranoid. Furthermore, they are disrespectful to the millions of Muslims who appreciate the benefits of living in a tolerant democracy and who would be the first to reject an imposition of Islamist rule in Turkey. Earlier this year, a survey by Metropoll Reasearch found that almost two-thirds of people in Turkey are against the existing ban on headscarves for women students.The secularists are actually risking the stability that they claim to defend, and are ostracizing Turkey’s devout Muslims, probably sending many to the other side of the radical spectrum.

Prime minister Erdogan has by no means been a perfect leader. He pushed many people’s buttons when he endorsed the presidential candidacy of Abdullah Gul, a self-described former Islamist, last year. But his political record speaks for itself. In five years in office, Erdogan has fought for re-defining Turkey’s natural role as a pathway between the East and the West, including by opening the door to Turkey’s accession to the EU.

What the crusaders of secularism find hard to understand is that Erdogan’s aspiration has been to make of Turkey a true democracy. Any modern democracy must protect the principle of secular laws, which must not be misunderstood as the state’s right to suppress religious freedoms. Unfortunate examples of this take on secularism abound in the world, and Turkey does not want to become another one. One would expect judges to understand this very basic point.

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